For the past five years, parents of newborns have been receiving teddy bears as part of the Mother and Baby Unit discharge instructions at Baylor Scott & White Medical Center – Irving. Their purpose – to educate parents about the dangers of accidentally leaving a child unattended in a car and to help serve as a reminder that there's an infant or toddler in the car's backseat.
Backseat Buddy ® is a program that pre-dates a new Texas state law requiring hospitals to provide education materials for parents of newborns warning about the dangers of heat stroke to children left unattended in motor vehicles. Texas House Bill 2574, titled, "Informational Materials on Unattended Children in Motor Vehicles," takes effect Sept. 1, 2015.
"The new law specifies that parents of newborns must be educated by the hospital about the risk of leaving an infant in a car unattended," says Anne Tudhope, director of Women and Infant Services at the Irving medical center. "We've been doing that for five years and the program is still going strong. We give out about 2,000 Backseat Buddy ® bears every year. The only change has been the bears' T-shirts. They were changed to display our new name – Baylor Scott & White Health."
Here's how the system works: When a parent or another driver turns off the ignition to exit the car, he or she unclips the bear from his or her key chain and clips it to the car seat when he or she removes the child. When the driver returns, the child goes back into the car seat and the bear clips back on the car keys. The bear is a visual reminder that helps keep the driver's precious cargo safe from heat stroke. Children are particularly susceptible to heat stroke because a child's body temperature can warm at a rate three to five times faster than an adult's.
"Heat stroke occurs when a person's temperature exceeds 105 degrees F (and is) associated with neurological impairments. The body is not able to cope with the excessive heat," says Dr. Charles Su, medical director of the emergency department at Baylor Scott & White - Irving. Normally, people cool down by sweating, but in extreme heat the body can lose its ability to regulate temperature. The sweating function fails and body temperature rises rapidly, resulting in heat stroke, which is the most severe form of heat illness and is a life-threatening emergency.
The Backseat Buddy ® program was the brainchild of nurses at the Irving facility back in 2010 as a way to combat child hot car heatstroke deaths. According to the website noheatstroke.org, Texas leads the nation in deaths of children left in hot cars, losing 68 children from this cause of death since 1998.
"It's an innovative program that was spurred by news stories about babies and toddlers who died as a result of being left in a hot car," says Tudhope. "The nurses asked themselves, 'What could we do to help people remember when there's a baby in the backseat of the car?' the Backseat Buddy Bears program was their solution. Empowering nurses to be decision makers speaks to the Baylor Scott & White culture and the American Nurses Credentialing Center Magnet philosophy – and Irving is a Magnet-designated hospital."
For more information about the Backseat Buddy program, contact:
Anne Tudhope, MS, RNC-NIC
Director, Women & Children's Services
Baylor Scott & White Medical Center - Irving
972-579-8219 office; 972-579-3934 fax
Anne.Tudhope@BaylorHealth.edu
* based on unaudited 2014 fiscal year statements
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MEDIA CONTACT:
Susan Hall
Susan.Hall@BaylorHealth.edu
214-820-1817
About Baylor Scott & White Health
As the largest not-for-profit health system in the state of Texas, Baylor Scott & White promotes the health and well-being of every individual, family and community it serves. It is committed to making quality care more accessible, convenient and affordable through its integrated delivery network, which includes the Baylor Scott & White Health Plan, Baylor Scott & White Research Institute, the Baylor Scott & White Quality Alliance and its leading digital health platform – MyBSWHealth. Through 51 hospitals and more than 1,200 access points, including flagship academic medical centers in Dallas, Fort Worth and Temple, the system offers the full continuum of care, from primary to award-winning specialty care. Founded as a Christian ministry of healing more than a century ago, Baylor Scott & White today serves more than three million Texans. For more information, visit: BSWHealth.com
